FAPPAF Bucket

Someday I will be dead, and maybe you will want to know about the media I consumed or wanted to consume. Furthermore, while I am still living, perhaps you want ideas on gifts you could give me. Well, either way, you've come to the right place.

Jan 10, 2010 7:24pm
Notes and Quotes from ‘Civilization and Its Discontents” “It is impossible to escape the impression that people constantly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves  and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.” “Normally, there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, of our own ego. This ego apears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything else.  That such an appearance is deceptive, and that on the contrary the ego is continued inwards, without any sharp delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity which we designate at the id and for which it serves as a kind of facade—this was a discovery made by psychoanalytic research.  But towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation.  Pathology has made us acquainted with a great number of states in which the boundary lines between ego and the external world become uncertain or in which they are actually drawn incorrectly.  Further reflectio tells us that the adult’s ego-feeling cannot have been the same from the beginning.  It must have gone through a process of development,  An infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world, as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him.” a tendency arises to recognize the source of sensations, to avoid those that cause pain, to see those that cause pleasure, and a sense of self independent of the external world is developed. “Originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself.  Our present ego feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive - indeed, an all-embracing - feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it.” General Problem of Preservation in the Sphere of the Mind “In the realm of the mind, what is primitive is so commonly preserved alongside of the transformed version which has arisen from it.  In mental life nothing which has once been formed can perish, everything is somehow preserved and that in suitable circumstances, for instance, when regression goes back far enough, it can once more be brought to light. (The example of Ancient Rome, simultaneity of pre-existing forms). A friend tells Freud that through meditation it is possible to experience regressions into primitive states of consciousness long since overlaid. “A feeling can only be a source of energy if it is itself the expression of a strong need.” “Religion is a system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here.  The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father.  Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of men and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse.  The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.” ” ’ He who possesses science and art also has religion, bu he who possesses neither of these two, let him have religion.’ ” -Goethe

Notes and Quotes from ‘Civilization and Its Discontents”

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people constantly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves  and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

“Normally, there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, of our own ego. This ego apears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything else.  That such an appearance is deceptive, and that on the contrary the ego is continued inwards, without any sharp delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity which we designate at the id and for which it serves as a kind of facade—this was a discovery made by psychoanalytic research.  But towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation.  Pathology has made us acquainted with a great number of states in which the boundary lines between ego and the external world become uncertain or in which they are actually drawn incorrectly.  Further reflectio tells us that the adult’s ego-feeling cannot have been the same from the beginning.  It must have gone through a process of development,  An infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world, as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him.”

a tendency arises to recognize the source of sensations, to avoid those that cause pain, to see those that cause pleasure, and a sense of self independent of the external world is developed.

“Originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself.  Our present ego feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive - indeed, an all-embracing - feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it.”

General Problem of Preservation in the Sphere of the Mind

“In the realm of the mind, what is primitive is so commonly preserved alongside of the transformed version which has arisen from it.  In mental life nothing which has once been formed can perish, everything is somehow preserved and that in suitable circumstances, for instance, when regression goes back far enough, it can once more be brought to light. (The example of Ancient Rome, simultaneity of pre-existing forms).

A friend tells Freud that through meditation it is possible to experience regressions into primitive states of consciousness long since overlaid.

“A feeling can only be a source of energy if it is itself the expression of a strong need.”

“Religion is a system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here.  The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father.  Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of men and be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse.  The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.”

” ’ He who possesses science and art also has religion, bu he who possesses neither of these two, let him have religion.’ ” -Goethe
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